I recently watched Alfred Hitchcock’s classic movie, I Confess, about the priest who guards the seal of Confession for a murder of which he himself is accused. The story takes place on location in Quebec during the early 1950s with many scenes of the bustling city streets, Catholic church steeples, and an occasional robed Franciscan friar or habited nun walking by. There is a clear sense throughout the movie that one is in a vibrant Catholic city. 

            French Canada is a unique phenomenon. It is the only region in North America that from its founding colonization was evangelized by Catholics and whose vibrant Catholic culture remained firmly established up through the 20^thcentury. Yet in a stunning turn, the Catholic Church utterly collapsed in the 1960s in a way that no one could have predicted just a decade before. Canadian convert Fr. Richard John Neuhaus writes that with amazing rapidity, “Quebec went from being one of the most religiously observant societies to one of the least observant. Schools, hospitals, and social services were rigorously secularized; priestly vocations evaporated; Mass attendance plummeted; the churches were emptied; and politicians and priests together declared the revolution a success.”⁽¹⁾Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Appointment to Rome quoted in Preston Jones, “Quebec and Catholicism”, First Things. Accessed October 18, 2020. https://www.firstthings.com/article/1999/06/quebec-after-catholicism.

            The fall from grace in Quebec is perhaps the most dramatic collapse of the Catholic Faith of the 20^thcentury and it reveals certain key aspects to the de-Christianization of the West today. In this article, I will explain the inspiring outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the founding of New France and the fruits of holiness it produced. I will then skip forward 300 years to show how the faith was still flourishing in the mid-1900s before the collapse of the Church with the Quiet Revolution of Quebec of the 1960s. Lastly, I will reveal Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s analysis of why it happened and how the Church needs to go forward, all with the help of Our Lady.  

The French Counterreformation 

            Compared to Italy and Spain, France was a late-bloomer with the counterreformation. While Italy and Spain during the late 1500s had their Pope St. Pius V, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Ignatius, the holiness of St. Francis de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul in France did not blossom in the early 1600s. Furthermore, the newly founded Jesuit Order quickly extended itself beyond her borders into New France with its first missionaries arriving there in 1625. Perhaps most importantly and as a sign of the workings of the Holy Spirit, King Louis XIII consecrated his person and the entire kingdom of France to the Blessed Virgin Mary on the feast of the Assumption in 1638.⁽²⁾Daniel Sargent, Our Land and Our Lady (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940), 65.

            From its very foundations in 1608, Quebec breathed the Catholic faith. The strong missionary impulse of the first colonizers was embodied by its founder Samuel de Champlain who declared that it would be better to convert a single Indian than to conquer an empire.⁽³⁾Albert J. Nevins, Our American Catholic Heritage (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1972), 79. Champlain is rightly called the “Father of New France”. Brought up as a Huguenot in France, he converted to Catholicism and remained a faithful son of the Church until his holy death in Quebec on Christmas Day, 1635. A robust character (he crossed the Atlantic 27 times between 1599 and 1633!),⁽⁴⁾Kevin Starr, Continental Ambitions: Roman Catholicism in North America (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2016), 285. Champlain was an exemplary layman, whose devout faith and personal integrity motivated his governance style, not only defending the dignity of the natives, but founding a Catholic culture that would last for centuries.⁽⁵⁾Starr, 280.

            New France invited sacrifice, attracting men and women of heroic virtue. The first bishop of Quebec, St. François de Laval (+ 1708) was a leading figure of the colony and model pastor of souls. St. Marie of the Incarnation, (+ 1672) left France and discerned nothing less than that God was calling her to establish the Catholic faith in New France through the erection of schools in Quebec. St. Marguerite Bourgeoys, (+ 1700) was called to a similar mission down the river in Montreal, and she was affectionately referred to by all as the “Mother of the Colony”. 

            There are over a dozen others from 17^thcentury New France who are saints or whose causes have been opened. Perhaps most notably unknown of this group is the mysterious Servant of God, Jeanne Le Ber (+1714) of Montreal, who though born into an influential and noble family, and having promising marriage offers, surprisingly turned them all down and at age 18 became a hermit and mystic, living 27 years until her death in perpetual prayer and penance. The tremendous hardships, vision, and sincerity of these early colonizers are warmly portrayed in Willla Cather’s historical novel, Shadows on the Rock. 

New France’s Crowning Achievement

            The French approach to colonization was different than both the English and the Spanish of that period. Interested in fur trade, the French sought to make friends with the natives and gain their confidence. They intermarried with the natives, built schools for their education, and learned their languages.⁽⁶⁾Cf. Nevins, 79-80. Forced to decide to whom they would be loyal, the French befriended the Hurons, and hence remained ever an enemy of the dreaded Iroquois. 

            The Iroquois of the Great Lakes region lived in a dark world of tribal warfare, sorcery, and torture. They practiced magic and perfected their methods of torture as a way of showing other tribes that they should be feared. Despite these dangers, the first “Black Robes”, as the Jesuits were called because of their long black cassocks, arrived confident that, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5). 

            Among those Jesuits who arrived were St. Jean de Brébeuf and St. Isaac Jogues. Fr. Brébeuf, the husky leader of these courageous missionaries sought the narrow path, seeming to recognize that martyrdom was his fate. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, he offered himself as a sacrifice for the salvation of the native people writing in his journal: “I vow before your eternal Father and the Holy Spirit, before your most holy Mother and her most chaste spouse, before the angels, apostles and martyrs, before my blessed fathers St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier – in truth I vow to you, Jesus my Savior, that as far as I have the strength I will never fail to accept the grace of martyrdom, if some day in your infinite mercy should offer it to me, your most unworthy servant.” The vow was accepted and his life was sacrificed in a macabre Iroquois ritual that climaxed in their eating of his heart and drinking of his blood in 1649.

            Fr. Jogues followed his mentor St. Jean de Brébeuf by offering himself twice. After he recovered from the first martyrdom, like a honey bee returning to an open bud he came to the Iroquois for a second round, in which they did not fail to complete the martyr’s self-offering. There were a total of eight Jesuits who were martyred and eventually canonized after enduring horrific tortures.

            Tertullian once famously remarked: “The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians”, and so it was with St. Isaac Jogues who was martyred at Auriesville, New York in 1646. Just 10 years after his death, the daughter of an Iroquois warrior was born in the same village of Auriesville who would also one day be raised to the altars of the Church as a saint, St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks. In all their years of hard work, the Jesuit missions prospered in countless ways with the Hurons, with numerous established villages and thousands of baptisms, but ironically, their greatest fruit was not with the Hurons, but this squaw of their sworn enemies, the Iroquois.   

            Although there are no signs of the French missions in New York today, they left their eternal mark on the region. St. Kateri lived a mystical life of heroic abandonment to Christ and is the most fragrant fruit ever to come out of New York. As historian Daniel Sargent has written, “The ten Jesuit missions of New York State do not need to plead that they amounted to something. They have only to point to [Kateri]. What have all our sky-scraping busy cities ever produced like to her?”⁽⁷⁾Sargent, 107.

Thriving Quebecois Church of the Early 20^thCentury

            Although the Catholic Church had various successes and failures over the next 300 years, the question should be asked, “What was the state of the Catholic Church in Quebec prior to its collapse?” The acclaimed French Church historian, Henri Daniel-Rops wrote a chapter on the state of the faith in Quebec in 1939 as part of his multivolume work on the history of the Catholic Church. 

            In this chapter on Quebec, he explains how the Catholic faith was flourishing at that time: From 1867 to 1939, the total population of Canada increased from 3.5 million to 10.375 million, and the number of Catholics increased even faster, from 1.25 million to 4.5 million.⁽⁸⁾Henri Daniel-Rops, A Fight for God, Vol II (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1965), 162. Further, the number of priests went from 2,200 in 1867 to 10,000 in 1939.⁽⁹⁾Ibid., 166. Most impressive, Daniel-Rops asserts, “is her strictly religious vitality which has never flagged and which after all is the ultimate reason for her success. At a time when so many countries were suffering from a dearth of vocations the number of Canadian priests rose at a steady rate…It was rare to find a family that had not given at least one son to the Church.”⁽¹⁰⁾Ibid.,166.

            He attributed these numbers to two factors. First, Catholic immigration from Europe, and second, what he calls, “the demographic fecundity of French Canadians”. He states that French Catholic families often have 13, 15, or sometimes 20 children.⁽¹¹⁾Ibid., 162. Hence, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the flourishing Church of Quebec poured down into the United States in large numbers, especially New England, to found entire cities with vibrant Catholic parishes.⁽¹²⁾Ibid., 248, footnote 31. He paints a picture of a robust Church with a hopeful future, commending the Catholic Canadians for being “champions of the Catholic cause”, defending their national traditions, and pro-actively promoting their political needs.⁽¹³⁾Cf. Ibid., 162-163.

            Daniel-Rops concludes the chapter by saying that the future of Catholicism looks especially bright: “Nor is it surprising that the Canadian people remained faithful into the mid twentieth century. Fundamentally rural, they retained certain peasant characteristics. Whenever the traveler landed on the banks of the St. Lawrence he would find marks of solid faith: a church in every village, numerous convents, a crucifix at innumerable crossroads. Canadian families, too preserved the Christian habits of their ancestors: grace before and after meals, prayer in common morning and evening. Divorce was not obtainable. Popular manifestations of piety were many, and brought together large numbers of people; such were the pilgrimages to Our Lady of the Cape and to St. Anne of Beaupre.”⁽¹⁴⁾Ibid., 167.

            The “peasant characteristics” implies wholesome simplicity, but perhaps also revealing a weakness in the faith’s ability to endure. The modern world, with its rapid industrial and economic advancement, was about to introduce a way of life that would decimate Quebec’s Catholic culture. 

The Quiet Revolution

            The Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille) was a period of intense political and cultural change beginning with the election of Jean Lesage as Premier of Quebec in 1960. Its primary purpose was the secularization of Quebec, moving the government to take more control over the healthcare system and education, both of which had previously been managed by the Catholic Church. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) was at the same time prompting a dramatic spirit of change, so the leaders of the Quiet Revolution could effectively combine their secularizing ideas with the “Spirit of Vatican II”. The revolution garnered Quebecois nationalism, transforming the province from a rural society to a modern industrial state, and in the process relegated Catholic traditions to something that was outdated and obsolete. 

            Across the board, the Catholic Church declined in numbers, but there are two areas which particularly manifest this disastrous change. First is the decline in the number of religious sisters, women who had consecrated their lives to healing the sick, educating the young, and contemplating God. Incredibly, up until the early 1960s, Quebec was the region with the highest number of women religious in relation to the population in the entire world.⁽¹⁵⁾Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report, trans. Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 101. Yet from 1961 to 1981, the number of women religious declined almost by half, falling from 46,933 to 26,294.⁽¹⁶⁾Ibid., 101. As of 2018, there were less than 6,000 women religious in all of Quebec.⁽¹⁷⁾Ingrid Peretz, “Quebec’s dwindling number of Catholic nuns spells end of era in province” The Globe and Mail, July 25, 2018. Accessed October 22, 2020. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-quebecs-dwindling-number-of-catholic-nuns-spells-end-of-era-in/.

            Second, is the decline in family size. During this Quiet Revolution, the number of children in Quebec fell below the 2.1 Total Fertility Rate (the lifetime average number of live births per woman of child-bearing age), which is the necessary replacement for any society. In a 2003 journal article entitled, “Where have all the children gone?”, authors Catherine Krull and Frank Travato outline the spectacular fertility decline in Quebec’s during the Quiet Revolution from 3.8 in 1941 to 1.9 in 1991.⁽¹⁸⁾https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26498156_Where_have_all_the_children_gone_Quebec%27s_fertility_decline_1941-1991.

            It is not my intention here to detail the many complexities of what happened with the Quiet Revolution, which have been specified in many other places.⁽¹⁹⁾Two helpful articles that outline the Catholic Church’s decline during the Quiet Revolution: Preston Jones, “Quebec after Catholicism”, First Things, June 1999. Accessed October 18, 2020. https://www.firstthings.com/article/1999/06/quebec-after-catholicism; Paul Malvern, “Falling from Grace – The Fall and Rise of the Quebec Catholic Church”, CultureWitness.com, July 29, 2017. Accessed October 18, 2020. https://www.culturewitness.com/2017/07/falling-from-grace-rise-and-fall-of.html. A detailed scholarly study can be found in Michael Gauvraeu’s book, The Catholic Origins of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, 1931-1970. The main point is that Quebec’s Quiet Revolution did not happen through a Communist takeover or a violent revolution but through a sudden cultural shift and economic boom that captured the minds and hearts of a people who were for all appearances rooted in the their Catholic Faith. 

            Therefore, in certain key ways, the collapse of the Catholic Church in Quebec sheds light on today’s de-Christianization of the Western World. There are some voices that want to blame today’s failing Catholic Church on the Second Vatican Council, or a flawed liturgical renewal, or Humanae Vitae, all of which played various roles in the decline of the Church. However, it must also be recognized that the conditions which brought about the Catholic Church’s fall from grace and all that followed in Quebec were present prior to Vatican II. 

Ratzinger and the Feminine Genius 

            In 1985, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger released a book called The Ratzinger Report, which was an interview with Vitterio Messori on the state of the Church. In the interview, Ratzinger is asked about the crisis of the Church in Quebec and the loss of women religious. He immediately points to the distinction between masculinity and femininity, arguing that the Church in Quebec has wrongly taken on modernity’s masculine characteristics: “Christianity is reduced to an ideology of doing, according to that strictly masculine ecclesiology.”⁽²⁰⁾Ratzinger, 103. On the contrary, “It is no accident the word ‘Church’ is of feminine gender. In her, in fact, lives the mystery of motherhood, of gratitude, of contemplation, of beauty, of values in short that appear useless in the eyes of the profane world.”⁽²¹⁾Ibid.Ratzinger clarifies that a world consumed with productivity and political objectives sees a woman’s “wonderful capacity to give love, help, solace, warmth, solidarity” as “irrelevant and deviant”.⁽²²⁾Ibid.

            Pope St. John Paul II developed this theme during his pontificate, that there is a “feminine genius” which has been forgotten by modernity and the world is suffering because of it: “In our own time the successes of science and technology make it possible to attain material well-being to a degree hitherto unknown. While this favors some, it pushes others to the margins of society. In this way, unilateral progress can also lead to a gradual loss of sensitivity for man, that is, for what is essentially human. In this sense, our time in particular awaits the manifestation of that ‘genius’ which belongs to women, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance: because they are human! – and because ‘the greatest of these is love.’”⁽²³⁾John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 30. Modernity’s obsession with efficiency and productivity no longer has a place for things which cannot be quantified, such as love and sensitivity, but which are nevertheless the foundation for any fruitful family and community.  

            Ratzinger takes this point about the feminine genius even further, suggesting that women have a greater kinship to the mystical life: “[T]here is no longer any room [in Quebec] for mystical experience, for this pinnacle of religious life, which not by chance has been, through the centuries, among the glories and riches offered to all in unbroken constancy and fullness, more by women than by men. Those extraordinary women whom the Church has proclaimed her ‘saints’ and occasionally even her ‘doctors’, never hesitating to propose them as an example to all Christians.”⁽²⁴⁾Ratzinger, 103-104.

            Modernity, with all of its amazing technological advancements, is simply not capable of producing a St. Marie of the Incarnation, a St. Marguerite Bourgeoys, or a mystic like St. Kateri Tekakwitha. The latest cell phones, sky scrapers, and electric cars will eventually end up in a city dump, but the holy women of the Church will last for all eternity, having taken countless souls with them to paradise. 

            Lastly, Ratzinger concludes the remedy to modernity’s crisis which is devastating the vineyard of the Church is a woman, Mary of Nazareth: “If the place occupied by Mary has been essential to the equilibrium of the Faith, today it is urgent, as in few other epochs of Church history, to rediscover that place.”⁽²⁵⁾Ibid., 105. Ratzinger goes on to develop six reasons why Marian devotion is the remedy for the crisis of modernity. Cf. 106-109. The Blessed Virgin Mary, who teaches us about love and the glories of motherhood, becomes once again the path to integrating our modern world with our Catholic Faith. Her Immaculate Heart reveals to us not only the proven traditions of our Fathers, but the fullness of what it means to be human.